CORE A: ADMINISTRATIVE AND BIOSTATISTICS CORE - PROJECT SUMMARY Khosla/Kirkland The Administrative and Biostatistics Core (Core A) will provide the overall leadership as well as the infrastructure for the Program Project Grant (PPG). The four Projects in this PPG application represent independent but highly interactive research proposals by investigators who have an established track record of collaborative studies. Core A will be responsible for the overall coordination of activities across all Projects and Cores, which will be accomplished in the context of three Specific Aims. Aim 1 is to provide the administrative leadership necessary for the PPG. The Core will house the PPG Executive Committee, have responsibility for fiscal management of the PPG as a whole, prepare progress reports and interact with NIA program officers, coordinate the dissemination of data through participation in scientific meetings and publications, and organize programmatic meetings, including those of the Internal and External Advisory Committees. Aim 2 is to provide the biostatistical and bioinformatics resources for the design and analysis of the studies. The statistical team of Dr. Therneau and Ms. Atkinson will provide the full spectrum of biostatistical and bioinformatic support for the design and analysis of the experiments proposed in each of the Projects. Aim 3 will optimize syngergies, use of common models, data and resource sharing, and scientific integration across Projects and Cores. Core A will implement and maintain a novel Mouse Cloud Database, which will be a key tool to optimizing the sharing of mice and biological samples from the mice across Projects and indeed, with other investigators at Mayo and extramurally. This will facilitate a systems biology approach to the study of aging and senescence and greatly facilitate data sharing among program members. Thus, a crucial function of the Core is integration at multiple levels ? specifically, integration of tools and resources, and perhaps most importantly, scientific integration. Given the multi-disciplinary team of investigators and the focus of each team on a different tissue or physiological function (i.e., metabolism, bone, vasculature, muscle dysfunction/frailty), this application provides a unique opportunity in integrative physiology in the context of senescence and aging. In particular, we will be able to address key questions related to cross-talk between tissues and systemic effects of given changes in a particular tissue, and this scientific integration across tissues will be overseen by the Administrative and Biostatistics Core.